Research Article
From the Digital Divide to Digital Inequality: A Secondary Research in the European Union
@INPROCEEDINGS{10.1007/978-3-642-11631-5_4, author={Emmanouil Stiakakis and Pavlos Kariotellis and Maria Vlachopoulou}, title={From the Digital Divide to Digital Inequality: A Secondary Research in the European Union}, proceedings={Next Generation Society. Technological and Legal Issues. Third International Conference, e-Democracy 2009, Athens, Greece, September 23-25, 2009, Revised Selected Papers}, proceedings_a={E-DEMOCRACY}, year={2012}, month={5}, keywords={Digital divide digital inequality digital disparity ICT}, doi={10.1007/978-3-642-11631-5_4} }- Emmanouil Stiakakis
Pavlos Kariotellis
Maria Vlachopoulou
Year: 2012
From the Digital Divide to Digital Inequality: A Secondary Research in the European Union
E-DEMOCRACY
Springer
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-11631-5_4
Abstract
The digital divide is nowadays evolving to digital inequality, i.e., the socio-economic disparities inside the ‘online population’. This paper examines two main dimensions of the digital inequality, namely ‘skills’ and ‘autonomy’ of Internet users. The level of formal education was selected as a representative variable of the skill dimension, as well as the density of population in different geographical areas as a representative variable of the autonomy dimension. The research was focused on the member states of the European Union (EU). The data, provided by Eurostat, included the daily use of computers for the last three months and the average use of the Internet at least once per week. The findings state that the EU already faces the problem of digital inequality to an extended rate, since there are significant disparities among the European countries with regard to the aforementioned variables.